


Rescue Mission

by Asynca



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, in which asy hurts the precious baby cinnamon roll because she is truly a horrible person, loads of fucking angst do not say I didn't warn you, mercymaker, speedy recovery (sorta), ventfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 09:12:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10568202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: Tracer has decided Mercy doesn't get out enough (that can't be healthy, right?) and is determined to help solve what she's decided is a problem. The problem is, she doesn't have the full story on what Mercy's been up to.





	

We didn’t get to just hang out much, us lot. The whole saving-the-world business was pretty busy again these days, so between redeployments and catching up on real, actual sleep (not the type of sleep you get on sky cruiser ship, because those things are _murder_ for trying to get comfortable—I mean, sleeping upright, are you _mental_?), we just didn’t seem to have much time to do anything normal.

I wasn’t the one who got the worst of it, though. I had training in the mornings and evenings (of course), but during the day I just sort of rattled around Overwatch HQ trying to remember what on earth I’d done during the four years I’d been living there. The others always seemed way busier: Winston was always shut in his office at his old-fashioned blackboard and occasionally electrocuting himself, Torbjorn had about a hundred children now, and Dr Ziegler? Well, I hadn’t seen her in days. She never came out of her lab during the day, never. I didn’t think she’d seen sunlight in weeks (“I’m taking Vitamin D supplements, don’t worry!”), and when she went up to bed, you could hear her old sewing machine clunking along from all the way down the corridor deep into the night. She probably didn’t sleep very much, either.  

I lay in my own bed, listening to it and worrying about her. I mean, all work and no play couldn’t be good for her, right? I knew that her research was really important to her, but she had to get out of there at some point. It just wasn’t healthy, shutting herself in like that.

_And… well…_ I turned over in bed, exhaling. On top of it being unhealthy, I also sort of missed her, you know? It used to be nice spending time with her. She was always so warm and lovely, and she’d been one of the people who I’d really missed when Overwatch had been disbanded.

I’d never been someone to just sit on problems, so I decided the following day that I’d fix everything in one clean strike: I’d go and see Dr Ziegler, which would force her to talk to another actual human _and_ give me a really nice opportunity to spend time with her again.

The trouble was, the only sure-fire way to distract Doctor Z from her work was to be sick.

So…

“Tell me, Lena, do you get these terrible headaches at any specific time of day?” Dr Ziegler inquired as I hoisted myself up onto her exam table and she fussed around in her drawer for one of those poke-in-the-ear thingamabobs. “Or when you’re doing something specific, perhaps?” She put her fingers on my chin to steady it and popped the ear-thingy in my ear.

I knew basically _nothing_ about medicine, and this faking-an-illness act was pretty hard as a result. “Erm, it’s rather random, actually,” I lied, trying to imagine what sort of headache would make her need to do the most number of tests. “But it all happened after I bumped my head.”

That got her attention. “How long ago was that?”

Um. “Two weeks, perhaps?” I paused. “…Maybe?”

She relaxed, which meant I’d blown it. “Oh. Well, it’s probably unrelated, especially if your pain isn’t escalating,” she confirmed, and then peered into my ear. “Are they worse at night when you’re lying down in bed?”

“Isn’t everything worse at night when you’re lying down in bed?”

That made her laugh—and, lord, it had been _so long_ since I’d heard her laugh. It was such a nice sound. I beamed about managing it as she finished up whatever she was doing in my ear and walked around me.

She shot me a stern (but, really, slightly amused) glance before she stuck the ear-thingy in my other ear. “ _Lena_ ,” she said. “Your health isn’t a joke.”

I resisted the urge to joke about it anyway (messing about too much made the headache story less realistic, I thought), and just sat there primly with my legs swinging while she fussed about in my ear.

It felt nice to have someone so close, and it was nice to hear her worrying about me. Actually—horrible lies asides—this whole thing was pretty nice, really, and I was so glad she was my doctor. After all, how many people got to have pretty doctors who were also lovely people and actual geniuses?

“Well, there’s no inflammation in there,” she told me, interrupting my internal monologue about how wonderful she was, and then checked something on her ear-thingy. “And you don’t have a temperature.” She gave me an appraising look, thinking. “Hmm. Has anything been worrying you as of late?”

Hah. “You mean apart from the fact we’re probably on the brink of another omnic war?”

She could tell from my tone of voice that I wasn’t being serious. “ _Lena._ ”

“You did ask,” I pointed out and winked at her. She good-naturedly rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, and pointedly waited for my answer.

I was smiling, I couldn’t help it. I’d just forgotten how much I really enjoyed being around her.

“Lena. Any extra stressors lately?” she prompted.

Oh, right. Well… I considered that; what answer seemed the most ‘sick’? I couldn’t decide, so I just said, “I mean, perhaps I am stressing about things? I can’t say for sure that I’m not.”

She looked back at me, thinking. “I suppose none of us get out of here very much these days…” she conceded, and then stepped right up to me again so my knees were touching her stomach. Even though her lab coat, her blouse and her slacks, I could feel how warm her skin was. She lifted her hands to the base of my head—it gave me goosebumps, actually, being touched there—and said, “Turn your head as far as you can to the left?”

I did, and she presumably felt around for tight muscles while I enjoyed having all the skin on my neck palpated by her gentle fingertips. Should I pretend it was stiff? I probably should. I did, just in case.

“Hmm. It’s a little tight, perhaps it _is_ stress or muscle strain,” she concluded. “Other way.”

I followed her instructions and turned my head towards her desk, and I was just enjoying having her touching the other side, too, when I noticed a colourful flier on her desk. I squinted at it. ‘ _Summer Ball_ ’? “What’s a Summer Ball?”

Her fingertips froze on my neck; only for a moment though. “Oh, nothing,” she said, perhaps a little too quickly. “Just something silly I enjoy going to so I can dress up, sometimes.”

Oh, was that what she was up late sewing for…? “That doesn’t sound silly, that sounds really interesting! When is it?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight?!” I forgot all about my alleged headaches. “That’s wonderful! Are you definitely going to go to it? Because you should. I know saving everyone is definitely important and everything, but even you need some time to relax and have fun? You can do that at these things, right?”

She gave me a bit of an odd, and let her hands fall. She walked over to the desk, lifted the brochure, and handed it to me for a closer look.

It had stuffy, posh people all dressed up and dancing around stiffly like in old movies. Honestly, it looked like the sort of thing that would really bore me, I hated big fancy dos like that. It looked like the type of thing someone like Dr Ziegler would love, though. “Will people really dress up like that?” I found myself wondering aloud. “In the big puffy dresses?”

“Well, I was planning on wearing something like that…”

“That’s what you’ve been making, right? At night?” She opened her mouth maybe to ask how I knew… but in the end, just nodded. It was really comforting knowing she’d been spending all that time making something for herself to enjoy rather than mending her uniforms or working on one of her Valkyrie suits, really comforting. I liked the idea of her up there in her room, planning something beautiful. It made me feel really warm and happy for her.

I looked down at the people dancing on the front again. I couldn’t imagine anyone else from Overwatch dressing up like that, though. Maybe Reinhardt would get a kick out of it, but he was off somewhere else in Central Europe at the moment. “Are you going with any of the others?”

“No, I—” She paused. “Well, no.”

That question made her uncomfortable, I could tell. Maybe she didn’t have anyone to go with and was a bit embarrassed about it? I always felt like that when I went to the movies by myself.

She lifted her hands back up to my neck to continue her investigation into my headaches. “Anyway. Look right again?”

I did, but I was far too distracted by the thought of the Doc in a big posh dress all by herself to focus too much on how to convince her I had terrible headaches that needed her immediate attention.

I wondered what her dress was like—I’d hardly seen her in anything except scrubs or lab coats for _years_. She was always ‘Dr Ziegler’, everything about her was Dr Ziegler. The ‘Angela’ part of her was still a bit of a mystery. ‘Angela’ _did_ sound like the sort of name some in a beautiful big fluffy dress would have, though, didn’t it? I listened to the way it sounded in my head, and totally forgot I was being examined for illness.

In the end, I didn’t manage to convince her anything was terrible wrong with me at all.

“It’s probably just stress,” she told me eventually, writing that in my file. “You should probably take some of that leave you never take—get out of the ship, relax a little more.”

_Probably_ , I thought, not intending to do any of that when there were such lovely doctors _on_ my ship.

That was when I remembered I was holding the flier.

I looked down at it, feeling the smooth paper between my fingertips. Honestly, the whole thing looked completely over the top. Not in a bad way, though, just different. And different things could be fun, couldn’t they? I couldn’t let Doctor Z go by herself, either. That was awful, no one should be by themselves at something like this. “Well, maybe I should tag along to this thing and see what all the fuss is about, then.”

She immediately froze for a moment. It didn’t last long. “I-I thought you hated that sort of thing?”

I did. I’d never fancied this sort of thing and famously didn’t like dressing up, but I was already completely consumed by the idea of this beautiful dress she’d apparently been making and there was no bloody way in the world I was going to let her go by herself. Plus, I had a _great_ alibi in my fictional illness.  “Think about it, Doctor Z, I bet a bit of dancing would sort my sodding stress headaches out.”

She considered that. “O-Oh, well, that’s a good point, I suppose...”

“And I scrub up nice, I promise. I won’t embarrass you.”

“No, no, that’s not what I’m worried about, I just—” She laughed a little nervously from under those big long eyelashes of hers. It was almost coy.

I liked that. A little too much. “And I mean,” _was I really going to say it?_ “it would be really nice to see you in a lovely dress that you made yourself…”

Her cheeks went this gentle shade of pink, and she laughed nervously again, and you know when you suddenly find someone so absolutely and irresistibly gorgeous that you just want to throw your arms around them and kiss them all over and never stop but you can’t because they’re your doctor and they’re currently in the middle of examining you? _Yeah_. Wow.

“You’re too kind, Lena,” she said, unable to look at me. “But you can just come by my quarters on the ship when I’m dressed if you like—that way you can see my dress _and_ avoid the crowds of arrogant, rich people who you hate.”

As nice as being invited into her room would be—golly, could you imagine? I’d learn so much about her, just by being inside her room and being around all her things—and as much as I genuinely did bloody loathe the whole Posh Prick demographic, I’d sort of made my mind up. I wasn’t going to let her go by herself and be all alone. “I think I’d actually rather come and see what these fancy things are like.”

She swallowed. “Well, alright…”

I frowned, not understanding why she was…. Wait. Wait a minute. Maybe I sounded really rude, just inserting myself into her plans like that? Was _that_ why she was being so evasive…? “Oh! I mean, if it’s alright, that is? I don’t want to come barging in on your party and interrupt your—”

“—No! No, it’s fine, really,” she said quickly. “It’s just—well. I might leave a little early. I’m not sure, it depends on—well, it depends. And I know how late you like to stay out.”

Oh, was that it? “No, that’s perfectly alright, I can always stay on after you leave, anyway.” I took a breath. “Or, like… I could escort you home so you don’t have to come back by yourself in the dark.”

She blushed again, and it made my heart skip a beat. I hadn’t meant it exactly like it sounded, and honestly, I just wanted her to get home safely, but… was she reading _that_ into it, anyway? I didn’t really want to hope (honestly, having a one-sided crush on a pretty doctor had never really bothered me), but… Well, I’d never seen her blush like that, and be coy like this, all over her dress and the ball-thing. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it was a little exciting.

I tried to smother my butterflies. “What should I wear, though?” I wondered. “I don’t really do dresses, and I don’t have a tux. Do you think just wearing my old formal Overwatch uniform would be alright, the one with the medals and all that? If it still fits me, that is.”

Her eyes were veiled. “I’m sure that would be fine…”

She seemed a little…

Well. It was confusing. The blushing, the coyness, but also the hesitation. I couldn’t ignore it. “Doc, if you—I mean, if you don’t want me to go, just say. I’ll leave you alone, I promise, and I won’t be weird about it. I won’t ask to—”

She looked a little alarmed by that. “Oh, no! No,” she said. “Not at all, Lena, I love your company, I do. I just—” She paused for a moment, looked up at me, right into my eyes. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be bothered, being around all these people you don’t like? I’m rather worried it would make your headaches _worse_.”

Oh, was that all? I scoffed. “Don’t worry about that, Doctor Z. I’m quite capable of just ignoring a few posh snobs, I went to a private school full of them, after all, and I’m sure there will be some nice people there, too.”

Something about what I’d just said really comforted her. “That’s a good point,” she said, looking reassured. “Well, perhaps you will enjoy it, after all.” There was still a note of something hanging in her voice—I wanted to ask what it was, but I also felt like I didn’t really know her well enough to pry. Maybe she’d tell me later of her own accord. We left it, and after a moment, she’d dismissed it anyway and replaced it with a big, bright smile. It was a big relief, and it made me smile back at her.

“Well!” she said. “Well. I suppose it’s sorted, then. Shall we leave at eight from the hanger?”

My chest inflated like a balloon. Were we really doing this?! “Got it, Doc!” I told her, unable to stop myself saluting her before I left. “I’ll meet you at eight!” I could hear her chuckled behind me as I zipped out of her suites.

_I was going to a ball with Doctor Z_! Like, really! I wasn’t just lying in bed listening to her sewing machine and imagining it!

I buzzed all the way back to my quarters, buzzed _around_ my quarters, danced about a bit with a big, plush gorilla Winston had given me one birthday as a big joke, and then put my face level with its eyes. “I’m going to a ball with the Doc!” I told it, and then cheered, jumped up on my bed. She was going to have _such_ a good time, I was going to make sure of it! She deserved a nice, relaxing night after all the work she did! She was too nice to just be cooped up by herself forever, and I was going to make sure it was the _best night of her life_!

I stopped jumping when I realised how… well, how dirty that sounded. I was also _not_ going to take advantage of how lonely she most likely was, either. That would be terrible of me.

Feeling properly horrified at myself, I hopped down off my bed and went to look for all the bits and pieces of my formal uniform.

Fortunately, it still fit. It was a little tight around my thighs and biceps, though—proof that no matter what Morrison used to say about my scrawniness, I _was_ filling out a bit—and my latest model Chrono Accelerator was smaller than the first one and didn’t cover as much of my uniform as it used to. It looked much better, I thought. The whole ensemble looked better. It felt really good to be back in it again too, no matter what people had said about Overwatch.

I stood to attention and saluted myself in the mirror, beaming at my reflection. It had been a long time since I’d worn it, and I’d forgotten how much I liked myself in it. I _did_ look rather fit, didn’t I? Sure, I wasn’t benching 350 or whatever, but I’d date me—I mean, probably. If I didn’t find me really annoying, that is. Oh, lord, what if all that hesitation before was because she found me secretly annoying?!

_Okay, Lena, you can’t be annoying_ _tonight,_ I told my reflection, and then practiced not being annoying in the mirror until the sun had set and it wasn’t too embarrassingly early for me to go wait for her in the hanger.

I arrived too early anyway (after all these years, I was still hopeless at whole faster-than-everyone thing), so I hid a couple of doorways back inside so that I didn’t look like a hopeless lost teenager on her first date.

I was so busy rehearsing a completely suave greeting and some smooth compliments in my head that I almost didn’t hear the hanger door open and shut, and I almost missed her entrance.

Honestly, I don’t know how I could have missed her, even for a minute.

Her dress was like some sort of Disney ballgown—that’s the only way I could describe it. Its soft folds stood out against the sleek metal and high contrast lights where all the cars were garaged. I didn’t know any of the words for fabric (always been hopeless with that stuff) but it was whites and golds, ruffles and trains, stretching out behind her in shimmering, makeshift feathers as if she had two wings flowing behind her. Her blonde hair was down over her shoulders, too. I hadn’t seen it down for ages—it had really grown. She looked magical, and, _lord_ , so beautiful. So very beautiful. Like she wouldn’t be out of place at all being a Disney princess, even if she wasn’t 16 anymore.

Her eyes fell on me while I still had my jaw open.

I panicked. “Erm, hiya!” I gave her some sort of stupid wave, and then hated myself forever.

She laughed, basically floating across the floor on her magical dress over to me. “There you are!” She did a slow, deliberate spin. “What do you think?”

I didn’t waste a single moment completely embarrassing myself by saying earnestly, “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” _Oh, lord, did I really just—?_ “I mean! Your dress, it—and I—erm—”

She laughed, her cheeks going a little pink again. Against the white of her dress and the blonde of her hair, it just made her look even more beautiful. “Remind me to _always_ ask your opinion!” she chuckled, and then looked _me_ up and down.

I was immediately self-conscious. “Is it okay? I mean, wearing an Overwatch uniform?”

She stepped forward, lifted her gloved hands and brushed my shoulders down a couple of times, and the wistfully touched the ‘O’ insignia. “You look lovely.”

_Lovely_?!

The only reason I didn’t just sort of drift up into the sky after she’d said that was because she took my arm and anchored me to the ground. “Well, shall we?”

She was going to need to resurrect me multiple times throughout the night if she planned on touching me this much, even _with_ satin gloves on. I managed a sort of stifled ‘mmm-hmm!’ before we hopped into the car (or rather, _I_ hopped into the car, and she very slowly and very carefully climbed in with all her enormous, delicate dress), and headed in to the city.

The town hall where the ball was being hosted was all set-dressed like in one of those old movies—all the flashing billboards had been pulled down from outside, and all the lighting along the road had been replaced old fashioned iron street lamps. Inside the big double doors in the main hall, all the LEDS had been replaced with real chandeliers, the moving walkways had been replaced by parquetry, and everyone— _everyone_ , even the bloody string quartet—was dressed like they’d walked right out of an old movie.

It was incredible; enough to distract me from how pretty Dr Ziegler looked. “If I wasn’t certain my Chrono Accelerator were working, I’d think I’d just accidentally slipped back to the 1900s,” I found myself confessing to her, gaping at all the ladies in big fluffy dresses and the men in their sharp tuxedos. I didn’t even mind that they were probably all rich and horrible, the whole set-up was truly top-notch.  

The Doc was watching me (cue _my_ turn to blush), and seemed genuinely charmed by my reaction to it. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

Now there was an understatement. “I think I understand why you come to these things now.”

She blushed a little herself. “Mmm,” she said cryptically, and then gave me the grand tour of the hall, including all the important features like the buffet, the champagne table and—most importantly—the dance floor.

None of the couples on it were doing any sort of dance _I_ was familiar with; not that I was familiar with any sort of dance except the drunken kind you do when you’re sort of shuffling about to the music and trying not to fall over. Definitely not the sort of dance I wanted to do in a place like this.

I spent a little while carefully watching everyone spinning around and memorising the patterns before I thought I might be able to copy them without being _too_ dreadful at it. Looking hopefully at Doctor Z (who was watching the crowd a little nervously, I thought), I asked, “Do you… think we could try it?”

She snapped out of whatever trance she’d been in. “If you like?”

I did like, so she showed me how stand, how to hold her waist (!!!), and then let me try and lead her out onto the floor.

And, well. I wasn’t a slow learner, not at all. In fact, I’d always been pretty coordinated, so learning the steps wasn’t the problem. The actual problem was that the Doc was probably a good several inches taller than me _before_ she put heels on, and since she was dressed up to the nines and I was wearing my military boots, turning her meant she had to bend in a really awkward angle which made the whole side of her dress droop onto the floor at my feet. Avoiding treading on it took so much concentration that I’m sure I messed up the steps a few times.

On the lead up to each turn she’d give me this horribly apprehensive look, and we both chuckled and breathed a big sigh of relief when they were over. On the last turn, however, we got stuck in this extremely awkward position with our arms in a weird sort of mesh around each other’s shoulders and her train caught around my ankles and just ended up _laughing_ while the other couples (who all looked serious and beautiful) swept across the floor in perfect circles around us. Some of them were giving us right dirty looks.

She noticed. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I don’t think we’re making much of an impression.”

I went pink. “I’m sorry,” I told her as I stepped out of the coil of dress train at my feet. “Perhaps we could switch parts?” I did a little spin under her arm to demonstrate how well I fit there.

She gave me a beautiful little laugh. “I’ve never danced the man’s part,” she admitted.

Another woman’s voice—heavily accented—interrupted us. “And you shouldn’t have to dance the lead simply because you have an _incompetent_ dance partner.”

The shock of something so nasty when I’d been having so much fun felt like a full-on slap in the face, and I reeled from it, mute and stunned. Even more shocking was the fact that I recognised that voice.

So did Doctor Z. Her breath caught in her throat.

One black-gloved hand snaked onto her shoulder… attached to the cool blue skin of a tattooed arm. “Mind if I cut in?” Her face appeared beside Doctor’s Z’s.

_Widowmaker_?!

I-I couldn’t— It was such a horrible shock, seeing her face here. It felt like another slap, and my heart was _pounding_. Instinctively, I reached for my pistols so I could protect Dr Ziegler from her—but I wasn’t wearing my holsters— _why_ had I chosen not to wear them, why!?— it was too much, all of it, from that sneer, to the sting in her voice, even to details like that wasn’t in her uniform—although her ballgown was obviously a variation on it, with black lace, pink satin, even a tiara-like-think that somewhat resembled her visor.

I didn’t know why she was here, I didn’t know what she was doing, and she wasn’t attacking me—or she _seemed_ not to be attacking me?!—but I was filled with absolute hatred for her. She _always_ showed up when I was having fun. She _always_ had to crash all of my parties.

Why did she always _ruin everything_?

“What are _you_ doing here?” I found myself spitting at her.

She didn’t look as upset as I was. In fact, she hardly bothered to look at me. She was so calm. “Obviously, I’m here to kill you,” she said tiredly.

I blinked at her. Was she just being facetious—or did that explain why she always showed up? “Wait, really?”

I’d never seen a ruder eyeroll in my whole life. “No, of _course_ not,” she said, deigning me with an oh-so brief glance. “You’re not important enough for anyone to care if you’re alive or dead. I’m here for the same reason you are.” She paused, gave my uniform the rudest, most bloody judgmental once-over, and then shrugged. “Well, maybe not the reason _you_ are. But the reason everybody else is here.”

I looked around us. I didn’t really know why everyone else was here, and I was honestly just so surprised she wasn’t attacking us to have much brain space left to think of much else.

She looked disgusted by my vacant look. “To dress up.”

I didn’t like how she was speaking to me, though; not at all. I closed my jaw, composed myself and looked back at her. “Oh, _really_? To dress up?” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “You don’t really seem like the sort of person who’d like to put more clothing on. Quite the opposite, actually.”

I didn’t realise that Doctor Z hadn’t been present in the conversation until she put a hand on both our arms. “Please, you two. no fighting. I had quite enough of that with Jack and Gabe.”

Was she really—After everything Widowmaker had—? “’No fighting’?” I asked her. “ _No fighting_? You’re really asking me not to fight with her after everything she’s done, after everyone’s she’s hurt, and everything she’s—”

“Yes,” she said, deceptively gently. “I am.”

Why was she so calm? “But, _why_?”

“Please, Lena. Both of you.”

_Both of us_?! I wasn’t the one assassinating pacifists left and right, and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down! I looked across at Widowmaker, stunned, and she raised her eyebrows at me in challenge and gave me the smuggest, and most indulgent smirk. I was nearly _sick._

I turned sharply back to Doctor Z. I was so confused. “What is going _on_?” I asked her, gripping her shoulders and forgetting to be careful of her dress. “She suddenly shows up here, only a few weeks after she’s killed Mondatta, _the_ Mondatta, the one person who everyone was saying could stop the war and bring peace, acting like butter wouldn’t melt in her bloody mouth and she’s the _whole bloody reason_ why all the peace treaties and all the ceasefire agreements are falling apart at the seams right under our…”

Neither of them were responding much to what I was saying.

I kept talking for a bit, I think, but the words sort of died on my lips. I didn’t understand why they were just watching me.

That’s when it hit me: Dr Ziegler was relaxed. She _wasn’t_ afraid of Widowmaker, and she wasn’t at all surprised Widowmaker was here, either. Both of them were facing me, together, like I was the third wheel. And—had Widowmaker just asked her to _dance_ before—?

I-I couldn’t—

No.

I didn’t understand. “What is this?” I asked Dr Ziegler quietly, and then swallowed. “Are—are you secretly working for Talon or something, or—?”

She shook her head, and Widowmaker laughed once. “Despite my best attempts, no.”

“Then what…”

A silence stretch between the three of us.

Eventually, Widowmaker made a ‘hmph’ noise again, and turned on one full hip. “You know, for someone so quick, you can be so _terribly_ slow,” she told me dryly, and then said to the Doc, “I’m going to go and get us some champagne.”

I watched her leave, moving gracefully across the floor like she owned the place.

Dr Zielger was watching her, too. She took a breath, and then looked back at me. “She’s my friend, Lena.”

I twisted to face her, horrified by that statement. “ _Widowmaker_ is your friend?”

She looked guarded again. “Amélie is.”

I looked back at the blue-tinged woman by the champagne fountain, and hardly recognised her. “That’s not Amélie, Dr Ziegler.”

“It is.” Calm. Compassionate. Like she was explaining a difficult concept to a five year old, I hated it.

She was wrong, anyway. “It’s _not_ , Doctor Z,” I corrected her. “It’s not! Maybe you haven’t seen what Widowmaker can do, but I have, I’ve seen it all, and it’s things that gentle Amélie—sweet, gentle Amélie—would never do, not in a million, billion years. I saw her shot Mondatta in the face. I saw it. It was her.”

“She’s been through a lot. She’s suffering.”

“So was I, but I didn’t—” I was going to say ‘shoot people’, except I _had_ shot people, many people, and I didn’t know how to explain on the spot that they were the _right_ people, the ones who needed to be shot. “She’s _awful_ ,” was what I managed to say.

She wasn’t listening to me. “You would be, too, in her place.” She spent a moment taking a long, deep breath, and then letting it out. “Look, I’m sorry. This is all my fault, Lena. I—well, she doesn’t come to every ball, so I thought it was pointless to bother you if she wasn’t going to come to this one—and I thought even if she _did_ come she probably wouldn’t confront me in front of you…”

But she had. My jaw tightened. “I told you. She’s _awful_.”

Dr Ziegler sighed at length. “She’s got a lot to work through, I’ll admit. But she was _tortured,_ you understand. For weeks. She needs our mercy and our forgiveness to recover from that.” She put one warm, gloved hand on my arm, silent for a moment. I just had no idea what to say. I was lost. I’d come here with the most beautiful woman in the world—on top of the world with her, myself!—I could hardly manage to piece together what had happened. I just wanted to go home with her, now. To pretend it hadn’t ended.  

After a little while, she spoke. “Maybe you could stay here anyway, Lena?” My heart lifted for a moment. “There’s lots of lovely women here, after all. I thought it might be a really nice place for you to meet someone special.”

O-Oh…

While I was struggling to pull the sword out of my heart, she added. “You do look lovely in that uniform. Someone will definitely fall for that.”

Maybe; I clenched my jaw, looking away.

She squeezed my arm once, gave me such a compassionate look, said, “I’m sorry, Lena, I’m so sorry,” and then floated across the perfect parquetry and amongst the other beautifully dressed women over to where _Widowmaker_ was holding a glass of champagne for her.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying; but I didn’t need to. Widowmaker handed her the glass, and then touched the lace on Dr Ziegler’s delicate choker, brushed the hair from her shoulders and away from the dress, and then stood back, admiring it. I could see how impressed she was, and how genuine the compliment she delivered would have been as a result… and there it was: a deep, rich, delighted blush on Dr Ziegler’s cheeks. A real blush, for no one else except Widowmaker. I watched Dr Ziegler absolutely light up as Widowmaker appreciated the little details of her dress, and then watched as Dr Ziegler’s gloved fingertips explored the intricacies of Widowmaker’s dress; touching every loop of lace, every red stone embroidered into black satin like she was at worship. It was so delicate. So private. It wouldn’t have been more intimate if they’d even started making love right there in the ballroom.

I watched mutely as they finished their champagne and walked out to the dance floor, and watched as they danced gracefully together in the radiant half-light of the crystal chandeliers, a hand on each other’s waist and the other fanning out their long, beautiful skirts behind them. The Doc’s eyes weren’t veiled like when she’d been dancing with me—they were _alive_. Alive, and fixed on the _monster_ dancing with her.

I just…. I couldn’t reconcile it. Not at all. Dr Ziegler was such a beautiful, lovely, wonderful person. Light shone out of her. She made everyone around her feel good and good about themselves—and I thought that I wasn’t half bad at making her smile, too. So _why_ would she choose someone cruel and nasty like Widowmaker when—well, when she had other options? _Why_?

I just…

I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand, but I felt—well, I felt like something inside me had just scrunched up in a tiny, ugly little ball. I’d actually thought someone beautiful and graceful and amazing like Dr Ziegler needed _my_ help. _My_ help?! I mean, look at me—I looked down my front at my stuffy old uniform, and then back up at the ethereal beauty of their dresses as they swept across the floor.

I felt plain. I just felt so plain. So plain, so stupid, and so naïve… _just_ like Widowmaker had always said.

Just as I was _shaking_ with it, shaking with that horrible, petty feeling building inside me, Widowmaker caught sight of me over Dr Ziegler’s shoulder and she _smirked_. There was triumph in it. There was indulgent, cruel triumph in it in the way she looked at me.

And—lord, I—

I felt _sick_. I felt sick. I’d just wanted to make Dr Zeigler happy—really truly, all I’d ever wanted to do was make her happy—and the thought that she’d chosen to dance with this… this _monster_ over dancing with me, was—

My stomach clenched with it, my chest ached with it: the awfulness of the choice that she’d made. The awfulness of someone freely choosing _that_ over _me_.

I couldn’t bear it, so I didn’t. I _didn’t_ bear it. I blinked clean out of the open doors into the cold night air, and then just caught a taxi home, nursing that rotting, twisting, curling feeling in my stomach like a spreading bruise.

In the end, _I_ was the one who locked myself away alone that night, and the two of them went home together, took their beautiful dresses off together, and made love together in the moonlight while I cried myself to sleep.

 


End file.
